Pop Culture Musings for the Rest of Us

Uncategorized

Post navigation

I’ve decided to split out my family films from my blu-ray collection listing, both to shorten the posts up and to reflect the division I’ve made in the organization of the actual discs themselves. As the father of a little boy, this is easily the fastest growing segment of my blu-ray collection, because sometimes, you just want the little buggers to sit still for an hour or so (don’t worry, I also read to him and stuff).

Fidelity-wise, these are among the best blu-rays in my collection. Disney, who produced the majority of the films I own, are either the best blu-ray distribution house out there, or they’re a close second to Criterion. Of course, the Pixar transfers are amazing, with the full digital process used to make them. But equally impressive are the remastered versions of 60 year old classics, which are completely revitalized by the format. Films that had previously degraded to dull and murky on previous formats really pop on blu-ray. If you’re looking for reference material for you system, or a great argument for the format in general, look no further than the titles on this page (except for The Fox and the Hound, which is an insult to the format).

As an added bonus, most of these collections are BRD/DVD combo packs, which is excellent if you want to also keep your kid quiet in a room with a TV without blu-ray capabilities (I take him out to play all the time, I swear!).Continue reading →

May is over, and the summer movie season has already begun with the big releases of Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, and Up. It’s kinda like Christmas, in how it starts earlier every year. But this year I’m grateful, because they got the movies I most wanted to see out of the way early. I expect to be very busy of the next 3 months to, uhh… 20 or so years, and thus won’t have much opportunity to go to movies. Hollywood was nice enough to accommodate the birth of my first child with one of the worst looking summer movie seasons in years. But there’s still a few that I want to see, so I figure I’d list them here, and let you all volunteer to babysit or something later.Continue reading →

It’s time for another instalment of me giving quick recommendations from assorted pop culture categories of things I’m currently into. These things may or may not be current, but are things that I’m currently enjoying (or have recently enjoyed) that I think you (the reader) might enjoy as well. Provided that you enjoy things that are awesome.

In the past, I’d write reviews of things that I wanted to recommend, but I don’t have as much time to write those reviews as I used to, so instead of deciding how good something is, or weighing pros and cons, and all those things a responsible reviewer does, I’m just gonna come right out and say “I like these things. They are worthwhile”, which is basically what anyone is looking for when reading a review anyway. And because blogging can (and should) be a two-way street, please feel free to leave a comment with any recommendations you’d think I’d be into.Continue reading →

It’s time for another installment of me giving quick recommendations from assorted pop culture categories of things I’m currently into. These things may or may not be current, but are things that I’m currently enjoying (or have recently enjoyed) that I think you (the reader) might enjoy as well. Provided that you enjoy things that are awesome.

In the past, I’d write reviews of things that I wanted to recommend, but I don’t have as much time to write those reviews as I used to, so instead of deciding how good something is, or weighing pros and cons, and all those things a responsible reviewer does, I’m just gonna come right out and say “I like these things. They are worthwhile”, which is basically what anyone is looking for when reading a review anyway. And because blogging can (and should) be a two-way street, please feel free to leave a comment with any recommendations you’d think I’d be into.Continue reading →

Apparently, Spring is in the air, and thus its time for me to declare which upcoming movies of the season have caught my eye. Last time out, I listed a total of 17 films that I wanted to see in that period, most of which were actually 2008 releases. Of those 17, I ended up seeing 11 of them, with one movie’s release date being pushed back to this Friday, and another that was pushed back to Friday, so I only skipped out on four I listed. I’ll catch Defiance when it comes out on blu-ray, might still make it out to Monsters vs Aliens (only on 3D though), and think Duplicity is probably worth watching, but will probably wait on that too.

This season will be the last in awhile where I can go to movies at will, and even then, the end of the season could be touch and go. As such, I’m trying to be pickier with my choices. Ultimately, this isn’t the worst thing in the world, given that many of the movies I’ve gone to recently featured various projection problems (scratched prints, poorly framed projection, not projected brightly enough, bad sound), whereas my home set-up has only gotten better.Continue reading →